If John Ain't Happy
by wendymarlowe
Summary: Asexual!Sherlock can tell that John wants more from their relationship - and if John doesn't get what he wants, he might leave. Obviously the best way to keep John around is for Sherlock to pretend he's just as interested in sex as John is. (Fun little muddle-up of smut and angst, here, and Sherlock being delightfully dense.)


Note: I wanted to try something a bit angstier than my "John and Sherlock's Kinky First Times" series, so here you go. Writing in Sherlock's head is definitely more of a challenge!

* * *

Their eyes met and locked, for the fifth time in a little over a week. Sherlock added another tally to his mental count. John was now up to two "accidental" shoulder-brushes, three comforting touches on the back of Sherlock's hand and one on his waist, two occasions of sitting at least six inches closer than was the norm when watching the telly, and the five not-entirely-innocent long looks. It didn't take a famous consulting detective to predict what might come next.

And it did, that evening, when they got back to the flat. John closed the door behind them, then spun and pinned Sherlock to it with surprising speed. The kiss was the exact opposite - John's lips descended slowly, allowing Sherlock every opportunity to object, but when they connected with Sherlock's they were soft and gentle and tender. If kissing John was going to be like that every time, Sherlock had no objections.

It would never be just kissing, though. John was a physical man - it showed in practically every aspect of his life. He actually cared about what he ate (and tried to enjoy it when he could), he didn't shy away from touch as a method to communicate, and having a bum leg damn near killed him because it meant he thought he couldn't keep up with the day-to-day demands of his previously active life. And, more germane to the topic, he couldn't go two days without either shagging his current girlfriend or having a wank.

Sherlock, on the other hand, was perfectly fine foregoing those particular bodily cravings. Girlfriends (and boyfriends, honestly) were messy and problematic and prone to gratuitous demands for emotion, and masturbation had simply never seemed to be worth the effort. Some aspects of being in a relationship did sound appealing, true, but the underlying obligation had always seemed to outweigh the positives.

This was _John_, though. Sherlock flipped through his mental stock of _facts about John_ as he allowed the kiss to deepen. John was honest, sometimes to a fault. He was trustworthy and fiercely so. For reasons beyond Sherlock's ability to fathom, he seemed to value Sherlock for more than his intellect, and genuinely appeared to enjoy his company. The physical desire likely played a part in that, but was at best merely a closely correlated variable.

In a larger view, John had become a part of Sherlock the way Sherlock had obviously become a part of John. He couldn't imagine tackling a new case without John at his side - maybe a level 6 or below, perhaps, but certainly nothing of substance. John did things like ensuring Sherlock ate food at regular intervals, helped smooth things over when Sherlock bollocksed up his relationships at the Yard with some true but unflattering observation, and just generally ensured Sherlock's life flowed more smoothly. He even acted as a buffer for Mycroft, who wasn't half as intrusive now that he knew John was there and wouldn't have tolerated Sherlock reverting to cocaine (as if he needed to, now that he had John!).

John was, in short, an indispensable part of Sherlock's life. And at some point in recent history, he seemed to have decided that their "we're just flatmates" relationship was, in fact, something rather more. And that Sherlock would welcome that closer connection.

"You're doing a lot of thinking for someone in the middle of a thorough snog," John said softly, pulling his head back just far enough for his breath to ghost against Sherlock's cheek.

Sherlock blinked, snapping back into the moment.

"Not good?" John's hand stole up to thread through the fine hairs at the nape of Sherlock's neck. "I thought, maybe, you'd feel the same way I - I mean, I assumed you'd have noticed -"

"Of course I noticed," Sherlock said, not letting any of his inner monologue show on his face. "You've been blindingly obvious about your attraction to me."

"And is that . . . did I overstep?"

Sherlock's mind raced. He liked the little physical touches. He really liked the snogging. He wasn't particularly interested in a sexual relationship, but it took almost no time at all to conclude that with John, it would be an all-or-nothing deal. And - given that John had already kissed him and was breathlessly awaiting an answer - "nothing" in this case would be far worse than just reverting to the status quo. "Nothing" would mean John getting embarrassed, withdrawing, and possibly even moving out. Sherlock couldn't stand to accept "nothing."

Which left "all." Could he do this? The one time he had tried it before, it had ended rather badly. John wasn't Victor, though, and Sherlock was no longer an awestruck twenty-year-old feeling lonely at uni. Sherlock's powers of deduction had sharpened over the years, too - surely he would be able to at least fake what John wanted.

_Right then, it's decided_. Sherlock licked his lips slowly, noting how John's gaze darted down to that little flash of tongue. "I . . ." He paused, gauging John's expression. "I do want this. Want you."

There, that seemed to be what John needed to hear, because now he was pinning Sherlock against the door again and snogging him with an intensity bordering on manic. Sherlock closed his eyes and moaned into the kiss. John's fingers were strong and decisive, digging into the nape of Sherlock's neck with just the right amount of pressure to short out his thought process entirely. He let John snog him for long, delicious minutes, allowing his mind to drift and reveling in the sensations. _My John_.

The delightful part was over all too soon, though. John took Sherlock's bonelessness as encouragement - not an unreasonable deduction, since Sherlock was being very careful to hide any of his lackluster reactions. The kiss turned passionate, then incendiary, and then John was gripping Sherlock's ass and grinding into him in a not-entirely-intentional way and Sherlock suddenly jolted back into the present.

_It's okay, it's John,_ he reassured himself as they gradually moved toward the stairs in a wild jumble of limbs and elbows and lips and gutteral groaning in between those feral kisses. _John wants this, you want to make John happy, therefore you can act delighted long enough for him to get off and then he'll stay._

They burst into John's bedroom and ended up on the bed without either of them having actually made a concerted effort to get there - it just happened. John reached for the button of Sherlock's trousers, but Sherlock diverted him by the simple expedient of launching forward and tackling him onto his back before his hands could make contact. John huffed out a laugh, which immediately turned into a moan when Sherlock tongued his nipple through his shirt.

"Christ, Sherlock, you don't even know what you do to me."

"I turn you on, obviously," Sherlock said. It wasn't a particularly difficult deduction to make, given how hard John's erection was grinding into Sherlock's thigh. He didn't have to glance down to know his own was at around half-mast - promising, certainly, but a rather blatant red flag should John think to look. He started unbuttoning John's shirt, instead, pressing wet kisses down John's sternum as he uncovered it a rib at a time. "I make you-" - kiss - "-a little desperate-" - another kiss - "-and you can't wait to fuck me." He swept the shirt away from John's hips and tongued the trail of wiry hair leading down to John's belt buckle.

"Oh, fuck," John breathed, leaning back on his elbows and letting his head thunk against the wall. "God, Sherlock, I-"

Sherlock silenced him with a gentle squeeze to his crotch. It was warm and hard under the fabric of his jeans. "It's okay, John. I know. Do you have condoms and lube?"

"Top drawer," John panted. "You really want-"

"Don't be tedious," Sherlock interrupted. "We want the same thing." He swiftly unbuckled John's belt and stripped him from the waist down. John's cock was quite nice, actually, from an aesthetic standpoint - a proportional size to his body, unapologetically jutting out from a sandy nest of pubic hair. Sherlock supposed he felt a bit proud to have elicited such a clear physical reaction from his flatmate, simply by friction and snogging and _existing_.

But John wouldn't want him sitting back and analyzing - he would want sex. And sex involved some preparation. Sherlock pulled off his own shirt, baring his chest. He reached across John to open the wooden drawer, which not-entirely-incidentally dragged the length of his abdomen over John's warm erection. John gasped again.

It had been some time since Sherlock had used a condom for its intended purpose (instead of as experimental apparatus in a study on pH levels and homemade caustic liquids), but he felt he managed to get it open and lubed and rolled on John reasonably well. John didn't seem to find anything worth complaining about, at any rate. Sherlock gave John's cock a long, firm caress and sat back.

The moment the condom was on, John reached for Sherlock's trousers again. This time, Sherlock disengaged by rolling over onto his stomach and shucking his pants and trousers before John could try. The move pressed his lackluster erection into the mattress, hiding it from John's view. When he widened his legs a bit, it also presented his ass nicely for John's approval. Which was given by a sharp intake of breath and a quiet moan.

"Sherlock, you are absolutely gorgeous." John said in a low voice. "I can't believe you want to-"

"Fuck me, John," Sherlock interrupted, not quite ready to hear the end of that last statement. Partly because he knew it wasn't entirely true, and partly because he knew John wouldn't like it if he found out Sherlock was keeping something from him. "I want to feel your fingers and then your cock inside me, and I want you to pound into me until you can't breathe."

"Oh God. Yeah, I can do that." John squirted some lube onto his index finger and circled Sherlock's anus gently before pushing inside. It didn't hurt as much as Sherlock remembered, but it wasn't particularly pleasant either. He put on a show of liking it, though, moaning and pushing back against the intrusion in a way which had John's pupils dilating even wider.

A second finger joined the first. John was being so careful, so deliberate. So attentive to Sherlock's non-verbal cues. Sherlock shivered and shifted his hips a bit, trying to relax his muscles and accept the invasion. John laid his other hand flat on Sherlock's shoulder, gentle reassuring strokes, and the contact helped. When the third finger came a few minutes later, Sherlock barely jumped at all.

"Good?" John asked.

Sherlock nodded. "Want you inside me." _Want this part to be over with_. He added as much emotion as he could to his whispered _"Please, John . . ."_

John may have been an overly-careful lover, but he was also a man with a raging erection and three fingers up his willing flatmate's ass. He could hardly be blamed for not noticing the dissenting clues - Sherlock's only-slightly-elevated pulse, his skin temperature hovering around normal, the way he never quite looked as thoroughly _gone _as John himself was. He was extremely gentle, though, as he tugged Sherlock's hips back to the edge of the bed (leaving Sherlock's cock untouched for the moment, thank goodness) and lined himself up to carefully press against Sherlock's suddenly empty hole.

When he did slide in, it was inch by delicious inch. Sherlock closed his eyes and allowed himself to just catalogue the feeling. No pain, not really, just a strange _fullness _and a vague feeling of being annexed by another body. The head of John's cock found Sherlock's prostate, which produced another _zing _of sensation, but it was hard to categorize.

John's hands dropped to Sherlock's hips and clenched tightly. Sherlock allowed John to direct him, to shift his pelvis forward and backward in counterpoint to his own. John was breathing heavily now, little strangled gasps as he moved, and Sherlock found himself smiling at the sound.

"Love that, oh yes, please," he murmured for John's benefit. And it worked, because John's wrists seized up and his rhythm faltered, and then he was groaning loudly into Sherlock's ear and collapsing heavily against him. He lay there for a long moment before carefully sliding out of Sherlock's body, tying off the condom, and rolling over to lie on his back on the bed.

"I - that was - yeah," he gasped, a beatific smile on his face. "Give me a sec and I'll see to you, too."

"I'm fine."

John sobered a bit. "You didn't - I mean, I didn't feel you -"

Sherlock forced a smile. "No, but it's fine. Really."

"No, it's really not." John rolled to his side and tugged at Sherlock's hip. "Don't want you thinking I'm the kind of lover who-" His words died at the sight of Sherlock's limp cock. He glanced up at Sherlock's face, then back down, then up again. When he spoke again, his voice was small. "Sherlock? Did I hurt you?"

_Damn_. Sherlock bit his lip, tried to think through potential conversational possibilities and pick the one with the least probability of John getting really angry and storming out of the flat. The truth was out, of course, but maybe John would accept a benevolent misdirection . . . "Nothing like that," he said finally. "It's just - I already -"

"Bullshit," John declared with an air of accusatory disappointment. "You did not 'already' do anything. I've been with you all day, remember?" His expression shuttered. "Tell me I didn't just make a huge mistake."

"No!" Sherlock jackknifed over the edge of the mattress, grabbing his pants and trousers and tugging them back on. This wasn't the kind of conversation he wanted to have naked, with his body visibly betraying him. Although the clothes weren't entirely helping, because his hands were still shaking as he did up his trousers. "John, this wasn't a mistake. I wanted this as much as you did."

"Are you straight?"

Trust John to cut to the real issue. Sherlock considered lying, but immediately decided John would be even more angry about an attempted lie than he would about the truth. "Not exactly," he admitted.

"Asexual?"

Sherlock looked up into John's face, startled. John wasn't supposed to guess, wasn't supposed to realize -

But John was just shaking his head and sighing. "Shit. That's why I didn't say anything in the first place - you're never sexual about anything, really, and Irene Adler called you 'The Virgin,' and I thought you weren't interested in any of that. But then I knew I wasn't really hiding it anymore, and you didn't say anything, and I started to hope-"

Sherlock cleared his throat. "I - yeah. Not a virgin, although not by much. And 'asexual' is a phenomenally imprecise term. I don't like it."

"So what do you like?"

Sherlock shrugged.

John grabbed his own trousers and draped them over his lap, hiding his crotch. "We'll start with the easy stuff, then - you like us living together?"

_More than I ever thought possible._ Sherlock nodded sharply.

"You like touching? Not sexual, just the casual not-quite-platonic stuff?"

Sherlock swallowed. "Yes?"

"Don't ask me, tell me. And I'm asking both about myself specifically and about other people in general. Do you like the kissing part?"

"I -" Sherlock let out a breath. Honesty was _hard_. "I definitely liked kissing you. You're very good at it."

"Ever kiss anyone else?"

"A few times. Never felt as good as kissing you."

"Good. That's good." John rubbed his hand over his chest in an unconscious gesture, one Sherlock longed to copy with his own fingertips. "Okay, next question: you liked all that, but you didn't like the sex."

Sherlock opened his mouth, then closed it again. How could he possibly explain to such a blatantly _physical _person as John?

"I liked having sex with you," he finally said. It came out whinier than he had intended.

"No you didn't." John cocked his head to one side, observing Sherlock. _Deducing _him. "You liked provoking physiological reactions in me, and you liked the proof that I was turned on by you, but you didn't really like my cock in your ass. And - I'm extrapolating here - doing it the other way around wouldn't help either."

". . . no."

". . . then why the _fuck _did you say you did?" John whirled off the mattress, jamming his legs into his pants and trousers and pulling the loose halves of his shirt closed over his bare chest. "Was this just an experiment, Sherlock? Going to let me open up to you once and then shut me out after that?"

"No!" Sherlock was on his feet before his brain had a chance to catch up with his body. _John is angry, John is upset, John is going to leave . . ._ He had to stop that from happening. Sherlock reached out, palm upwards, a classic pose of supplication, but John just raised one eyebrow and looked down his nose at Sherlock's hand.

"You're going to have to be honest with me. Because I don't know what the fuck is going on right now, and I'm not inclined to stick around if you're going to dick me around like this."

Sherlock swallowed and made a deliberate effort to get his body back under control. Arms and hands back in at his sides, spine straight, head up, breathing even. As even as it could be with John threatening to walk out, anyway.

"I wanted you to stay," he finally said. "You wanted me and . . . I wanted you to stay."

But John was staring at him like he was some sort of alien species. "You wanted to manipulate me."

"I wanted you to stay," Sherlock insisted. "If you want a relationship, I can do that. I don't mind the sex, really - I'll be what you want, just please stay John -"

"Hush." John squared his shoulders and took a step forward, placing a finger against Sherlock's lips and silencing his impending outburst. "Sherlock, I'm sorry."

Sherlock bowed his head, letting his forehead rest against John's. "Don't leave me, John."

"I'm not going anywhere." John raised an arm and rubbed a calming hand against Sherlock's shoulderblade. "That was a shit thing for you to do, and I'm mad about it, but we're going to get dressed and go downstairs and talk this out. I don't want to let our friendship end like this."

Sherlock's heart sank at the word _friendship_, but he nodded dumbly and found his shirt. They both finished dressing in silence, then went down to sit at opposite ends of the sofa and stare at each other.

"Do you understand why I'm angry?" John eventually asked.

Sherlock nodded - then shook his head no.

"Right." John clenched his fingers over his knees. "I'm angry because you lied to me and tried to manipulate me. If we're going to make this work, you need to respect me enough to make my own decisions - even if it means I might decide something you don't like."

_Make this work_ . . . John was still here. He was still here and willing to talk in a relationship-y way and he was only going to give Sherlock a chance as long as Sherlock was willing to play by the rules - in this case, talking about feelings.

_I hate feelings_. But he would do it. For John.

"I'm sorry," Sherlock said quietly.

"That's a start." John sighed. "Get it out in the open, then - what is it you want, between us? And _not _what you think I want to hear - I want the truth. Anything less than that is going to cause problems down the road."

_Right_. Sherlock tried to sort through the room of _John Watson, FEELINGS FOR_ in his mind palace. "I . . . value you." That was certainly true enough. "I like having you nearby. I appreciate your presence on cases, where you work as a spectacular conductor of light, and I appreciate your presence around the flat. Even when I'm in a bad mood and it's been weeks since the last case and I'm horrible company. You take care of me more than I deserve, and I like that."

"Well that's certainly true enough." John flashed him a bland smile. "What about the physical side? Do you want to be more than friends?"

_Yes. No. _This part was trickier. "I want to be . . . us." Sherlock widened his eyes, praying John would be able to read the deeper meaning there. "I may not be interested in sex, but I want you to be happy so you'll stay. And if having sex is necessary to making you happy, I can do that."

"No, Sherlock. No no no no no." John lunged forward to grab Sherlock's hands. "It's not like that."

"Of course it is. You like sex, you want to be in a relationship with me, ergo you will leave that relationship if it doesn't include sex."

John shook his head. "This relationship comes a la carte, Sherlock. Tell me what you do want."

Sherlock swallowed. "The . . . the kissing. I rather liked that. And maybe the . . . little touches, you know, just around the flat." He bit his lip, certain John was waiting for more. "I could do more, honestly-"

_"Stop." _John scooted even closer, until his hips had Sherlock's pinned to the arm of the sofa and Sherlock could no longer avoid his eyes. "Kissing is good. How are you about cuddling?" He leaned in slowly, leaving plenty of time for Sherlock to stand up and bolt, but Sherlock had no intention of moving. John pressed his lips gently to Sherlock's jaw, then gently laid his head down on Sherlock's shoulder.

It was nice. ". . . I like it," Sherlock said.

"Mmmm," John mumbled. "So a yes, then."

"Yes."

"Good."

They sat there for ages, not moving, just touching each other and enjoying the sensation. Sherlock found his anxiety draining away, bit by bit, the longer John went without suddenly coming to his senses and running off. Eventually John sat up and stretched.

"Right then. I'm knackered. Next question - how do you feel about sharing a bed? Not sexually," he immediately clarified. "Just - cuddling while asleep. I don't snore, although I'm told I do tend to hog the covers."

Sherlock held his breath, just _looking _at his amazing flatmate. _Partner_, possibly, if that's the direction John wanted to go with it. Sherlock wasn't usually tired this early, he'd actually slept the night before in fact, but the idea of curling up next to John and just . . . existing . . . was inordinately tempting. And the thought of waking up next to him in the morning, sharing one of those mind-blowing kisses while they were both still drowsy and quiescent-

_Yes. Absolutely yes_. Sherlock stood and extended a hand to help John up. "My room," he said. "Your bed's all rumpled."

John smiled, a true smile, and Sherlock felt it all the way to his toes.


End file.
